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It's not a crime if we do it with an app

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Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#531

Post by AnthonyMouse »

viraptor wrote: post #518
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Option three: They get enough drivers to cover most of the peak, and end up paying for some idle time otherwise. Just like almost every company with permanent staff. That only works when the difference in demand between peak and off-peak is small relative to the cost of idle workers. In this case it isn't. > Alternatively option two with an explicit, upfront decisions who is actually part-time, so there are no surp…

> one person gets 40 hours and one person gets 10 instead of each person getting 25 hours If these are the upfront conditions, why is that an issue? But the main issue you're getting closer and closer to is: uber's model doesn't seem to be profitable if they have to pay and employ with reasonable conditions. They don't have to be profitable though. We really can let them fail. The reasonable cities can then provide s…

> If these are the upfront conditions, why is that an issue?

Because they might have both preferred 25 hours with flexibility to a forced choice between 40 inflexible hours or 10 flexible ones.

> uber's model doesn't seem to be profitable if they have to pay and employ with reasonable conditions.

Uber is an app. Their primary cost is paying drivers. They're not going to fail because you imposed this inflexibility on them. What's going to happen is they're going to have fewer drivers and provide less service. But "have fewer drivers" is those people losing their jobs, which isn't really helping them out.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#532

Post by daedrdev »

fransje26 wrote: post #521
greyface- wrote: post #125

> Inflation is one of the most politically salient factors of this decade > Inflation has lots of causes, it's true. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL Algorithmic price fixing is certainly a not-insignificant part of the issue. But it's strange to see zero acknowledgement of the massive increase in money supply over the same time period. When doing causal analysis, we need to examine both the private sector and…

> https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL This graph is absolutely insane. As I am completely unfamiliar with what is represented, would you have some pointers on where to start to understand what it represents? I'm particularly intrigued by the very sharp rise during the covid time, when the global economy was in taters.

It's not as insane as it looks. They changed the definition of M2 in 2020, which means we expect to see a jump right then

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#533

Post by FireBeyond »

lb1lf wrote: post #258
ryandrake wrote: post #17

More like "It's not a crime if a corporation does it." The US treats corporations with kid gloves. They get away with so much, and in those rare cases where a regulatory body does anything , it's often just a strongly worded letter, a warning, a threat to one day send a strongly worded letter, or, in really rare, extreme cases, a company official gets called in to say a few words in front of Congress. Nobody goes to…

'Corporations have neither bodies to be punished or souls to be condemned. Hence they do as they please.' -Edward, Lord Thurlow.

Tangentially, my other favorite on such things:

> There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

-- Robert Heinlein, Life-Line

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#534

Post by greyface- »

fransje26 wrote: post #521
greyface- wrote: post #125

> Inflation is one of the most politically salient factors of this decade > Inflation has lots of causes, it's true. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL Algorithmic price fixing is certainly a not-insignificant part of the issue. But it's strange to see zero acknowledgement of the massive increase in money supply over the same time period. When doing causal analysis, we need to examine both the private sector and…

> https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL This graph is absolutely insane. As I am completely unfamiliar with what is represented, would you have some pointers on where to start to understand what it represents? I'm particularly intrigued by the very sharp rise during the covid time, when the global economy was in taters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#535

Post by [deleted] »

daedrdev wrote: post #532
fransje26 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL This graph is absolutely insane. As I am completely unfamiliar with what is represented, would you have some pointers on where to start to understand what it represents? I'm particularly intrigued by the very sharp rise during the covid time, when the global economy was in taters.

It's not as insane as it looks. They changed the definition of M2 in 2020, which means we expect to see a jump right then

[deleted]

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#536

Post by CogitoCogito »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #247
CogitoCogito wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if our goal were to stop this sort of corporate behavior, we would remove the requirement of a crime being intentional for corporations.

> we would remove the requirement of a crime being intentional for corporations You still have the problem of punishing diffuse guilt. The correct answer is fines. Massive fines, potentially to the point of bankruptcy. We don't like to do that, however, because corporations have many stakeholders who may not deserve punishment, e.g. employees.

I agree the correct answer is fines, but I disagree that the government should concern itself with whether or not the company decides to take it out on employees who don't deserve it. It's up to the company to decide how it should be run. As long as the government disincentivizes the actions by making the fines high enough, that is good enough.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#537

Post by bschne »

arrosenberg wrote: post #463
daedrdev wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company that makes the cereal is a low margin business. In fact most food that isnt high end is low margin. Somewhere they have a lot of costs to cover.

None of that answers the question of why a box of cereal that costs a dollar or so to deliver landed to a store costs me $8 to buy. Middle men are taking a huge chunk of the pie!

Their point is simply that your cost estimate is likely wrong.

> It costs pennies to produce, maybe a dollar in landed cost

Kellanova last had gross, operating, and net margins of ~35%, ~13%, and ~8%, respectively [1]. Likewise, Walmart achieved ~25%, ~4%, ~3% [2]. This isn't really compatible with "someone makes 700% of net profits on this box of cereal", unless you assume cereal is single-handedly subsidizing huge loss leaders for both its producer and retailers.

1. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/K/kellanova/profit...

2. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/profit...

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#538

Post by AnthonyMouse »

arrosenberg wrote: post #314
pwg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The supplies of these goods have had occasional disruptions but are largely unchanged. Those "disruptions" you refer to create periods of "lack of supply" (i.e., less of the goods). That is what the "disruption" is, a temporary reduction in the "supply" > The demand has not changed in any material way. True, but, during the period of "temporary reduction in the supply" (i.e., the disruption) Econ 101's supply/deman…

Forget about oil for a second. Why is a large box of cereal $8 at the supermarket? It costs pennies to produce, maybe a dollar in landed cost. The small box costs almost the same landed and it's $5, which is also absurd. There is no supply shortage of corn and sugar, and no glut of demand for cereal. I'm not stupid, I understand supply and demand. COVID was 4 years ago. Explain the $8 box of cereal.

> Why is a large box of cereal $8 at the supermarket? It costs pennies to produce, maybe a dollar in landed cost. The small box costs almost the same landed and it's $5, which is also absurd. There is no supply shortage of corn and sugar, and no glut of demand for cereal.

Most of the cost of the cereal isn't the cereal. First you're paying for the store. That's real estate costs -- currently excruciating. Property tax and insurance, based on the real estate prices. The store needs heat and light, that's oil and electricity. There are people who work at the store, has your state recently increased its minimum wage? Grocery stores that don't buy advertising have fewer customers and have to amortize these costs over fewer sales, so you either have higher costs per unit because they didn't buy advertising or higher total costs because they did, etc.

The next question you might ask is, why don't they get rid of the store? Ship the cereal to your door. But it's like 8 oz of cereal, you'd get killed on the shipping. To make it work you'd need your whole grocery order to be delivered in one trip.

That could actually be an interesting business model. Instead of "free shipping" encouraging you to buy one item at a time but then the shipping cost is really baked into the item price, have "flat rate shipping" where you pay e.g. $35/order for shipping with no item limit. Then if you're buying what would otherwise be $400 in groceries for $200 by cutting out the retail store, paying the $35 is totally worth it, and you could be adding items to your cart all month for a scheduled monthly delivery.

But is anybody offering that?

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#539

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #319
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to start seizing IP into the public domain and sending shareholders to jail when their companies misbehave. I'm on the hook if my dog bites somebody, it should be no different if the role of my dog is played by a company. Monetary risk is not a real enough risk.

yea sure let’s make taking risks even harder we as a society are better off when people take risks

That's only true when they're risks associated with outcomes that people generally find favorable.

If the corresponding reward is that I pull off a successful crime, then we as a society are worse off for having funded the risk.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#540

Post by cratermoon »

_uxvx wrote: post #526
cratermoon wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redbaiting is SO 1950s

Redbaiting in 1950s turned out to be absolutely right thing to do, as latest unclassified documents showed. The problem is that now huge amount of us population live in the capitalism but preach socialism, even though there’s quite good choice of leftist countries where they can migrate to.

> The problem is that now huge amount of us population live in the capitalism but preach socialism, even though there’s quite good choice of leftist countries where they can migrate to.

You got me. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

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